Friday, May 9, 2008

Why so much preacher-bashing?

I got in on some great meetings yesterday, mostly encouraging but ending on a puzzling note.

We heard an expert speak about how to work in the inner city, but his enlightening ideas came with a decidedly anti-preacher tone. In his mind, preachers tend to be the problem, not the resource for solutions.

I thought about it later, and had a hard time getting it off my mind. Other such episodes came marching out of my memory.

George Barna, Christian researcher and author, did an interview several months back on Trinity Broadcasting Network about his then-new book Revolution. Same thing. Organized churches, along with their leaders, are the problem. Barna
claims that masses of believers are leaving organized churches and going it alone in mini-movements.

Mark Gungor, comedian and marriage counselor, took a similar approach (again on TBN). I've heard him remark several times that preachers aren't "manly" enough; they're too wimpy. I suppose he means that preachers often let women of the congregation push them around. (He needs to meet one of my preacher friends who's a former Marine, martial arts expert and champion in full-contact Karate.)

And I recently saw a televised sermon by a preacher with the same approach. He remarked about Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well and said, "What twelve professional preachers couldn't do, this woman did - she won the whole village to Christ!"

Certainly the woman should be applauded. But, the last time I checked, these "twelve professional preachers" were the Twelve that Jesus had personally chosen to carry his message to the world. And they did.


Although one of them betrayed him, the rest bore the burden of taking the gospel to the whole Roman world in their generation (Colossians 1:23). And most of them paid for it with their lives.

Besides, why did they go into town that day to buy food while Jesus stayed at the well? Could it be that he sent them on the errand and waited for the woman he had chosen to reach the village - a Samaritan village that wouldn't have listened to "twelve professional (Jewish) preachers" in the first place? (See John 4:4-38).

Amazingly, such simplistic preacher-bashing comes out of the mouths of believers! Add to that the world's (and the media's) attitude toward preachers and you have a full-scale assault on the veracity of men who've devoted
themselves to propagating the gospel.

I'll admit that preachers are sometimes hard to like, complicated people (I know, I am one). That's partly because we're pressured daily by an awesome God who gave us a humanly-impossible job to do, for which he holds us accountable. Preachers aren't perfect, but we should be. And that "should be" can be hard to live with.

I'll also admit that preachers often have a selfish agenda (Me, too). And I'll agree that we aren't, and shouldn't be, above criticism or beyond accountability.

But our primary accountability is to the One who called us. "Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls... So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God." (Romans 14:4,12 NIV).

The best way you can help modify the pastorate is to follow the Apostle Paul's advice: "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should." (Colossians 4:2-4 NIV).



4 comments:

JD said...

Gooood points Keith. I enjoyed so much the time spent with you Thursday.

And several things from that meeting stayed on my mind ... and are still on my mind.

And you are right about the tone of that meeting... which also came along with a note of "I'm not certain my idea will work either" ...

Anyway ... good thoughts friend.

Keith Roberts said...

Thanks, John. I hesitated somewhat to write the blog that way (don't want to be a whiner), but I seem to have encountered a lot of negative comments about preachers lately.

Caught part of your chat room last night.

Great stuff. See you soon.

A. I. said...

this is the kind of stuff we get and we were warned by some very good men that it would happen...Percy Keene...Don DeLukie...and others.

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